Sunday, July 06, 2014

Detective Comics #300 - Feb. 1962

Comics Weekend "The Mystery of the Undersea Safari" by Jack Miller(?) and Nick Cardy.

It's Adventure Sunday!

Just in time for Aquaman's final appearance in Detective Comics (and I pretty much mean that literally), he finally is involved in an actual mystery! Break out the magnifying glass and fingerprint kit, Arthur!

The treasure map points to the surface as the next stop, so Aquaman and Aqualad head there, finding their way to a cave at the far end of a lagoon. Waiting for them there is Professor Peters, who is confused when our heroes mention that his "friends" have been looking for him. In fact, these guys are crooks who have been on Peters' trail in attempt to steal the golden idols for themselves! Holy Belloch!

...and so ends another adventure for Aquaman and Aqualad!

Talking about going out on a winner! This was my favorite of all of the Detective Comics stories--first off, I'm a sucker for any Raiders of the Lost Ark-esque adventure, and all this particular story needs is Peters to have a hat and a whip. Secondly, Nick Cardy ups his game--if that was ever really possible--with some wonderfully dynamic sequences, like page two with the vines ("Vines, why did it have to be vines?") and page five, which is draped in shadow. Plus, I just plain love the fun of panel one on page six, with Aquaman and Aqualad just barreling into the bad guys like a couple of wrestlers. I could have seen a whole page of that.

After this brief run in Detective, Aquaman appeared "just" in his solo title and in Justice League of America. But DC wasn't done with him quite yet as a back-up star: a few months down the line, he started appearing in World's Finest Comics, which we will start covering next week, beginning our final stretch of Adventure Sundays!

4 comments:

Re: Batman: The Dynamic Duo in the 300th issue of Detective encounter Mr. Polka-Dot, a villain who can turn the dots on his costume into weaponry. The Polka-Dot Man turned out to not be a one-shot character, as he reappeared decades later in the 90s (now grimmer and grittier like everything else Bat-related, appearing as a now-washed-up villain). He also was on "Batman: the Brave and the Bold," though he didn't fight the Sea King IIRC.

I did a blog post about the various anniversary issues of "Detective": http://www.anthonynotes.com/2013/04/03/detective-comics-900th-issue-released-today-plus-previous-anniversary-issues/

The only two that seemed to merit any truly special attention by DC were #400 (the first appearance of Man-Bat) and #500 (the classic "To Kill a Legend"). The others seemed treated either as another ordinary issue or part of some crossover. Possibly related to Batman's first appearance being in 'Tec #27 (which also got some anniversary issues on related numbers)?